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3232Locarno 2017 – review – TOMORROW AND THEREAFTER (“Demain et tous les autres jours,” Noémie Lvovsky, 2017, France)https://cinecola.com/2017/08/17/locarno-2017-review-tomorrow-and-thereafter-demain-et-tous-les-autres-jours-noemie-lvovsky-2017-france/
https://cinecola.com/2017/08/17/locarno-2017-review-tomorrow-and-thereafter-demain-et-tous-les-autres-jours-noemie-lvovsky-2017-france/#respondThu, 17 Aug 2017 20:29:09 +0000http://cinecola.com/?p=7715]]>Mathilde (Luce Rodriguez) is a nine-year-old girl whose parents have recently separated. She lives with her mother (Noémie Lvovski), a fragile lady who has a tendency to lose touch with reality; though she is a loving mother, this disposition prevents her from taking care of her daughter properly. It is, in fact, Mathilde, who often finds herself having to be the responsible one.

Both Mathilde and her mother appear to have no friends, relatives, or acquaintances to speak of. Mathilde’s father (Mathieu Amalric) is mostly absent; though he is caring, they only communicate via Skype. One day, Mathilde receives an unusual present from her mother: a little owl. Soon enough, she discovers that she is able to talk to the owl, who becomes her closest friend, her conscience, a stand-in for her absent father and so on.

Tomorrow and Thereafter tries, for the most part, to be a coming-of-age drama about a nine-year-old girl’s challenging relationship with her parents, dominated by her perspective, but aimed at an adult audience. The intentions are nobly ambitious, but Lvovsky’s inability to distance herself from the movie leads to insufferable excesses that completely harm the film’s cohesiveness, especially as far as the film’s point of view is concerned.

Though the fairy-tale and gothic sequences are beautiful, they contrast with the narrative-driven nature of this drama. For instance, the stunning dream-sequence depicting Mathilde’s mother as a Shakespearean Ophelia running through the forest looking for her drowning daughter, inspired by the works of the great illustrator John Everett Millais, is wonderful, but purely surplus and paradoxically demystifying.

Even the naturalistic side of the story is flawed. For instance, it is the lack of the physical presence of Amalric’s character that makes it so powerful. However, later in the film, scenes that happen outside of Mathilde’s field of vision, involving her father and mother speaking alone, feel irresponsibly inconsistent. There is no such need for them, especially given that Tomorrow and Thereafter never confronts the particulars of the relationship between them, or even the question of mental illness, which remains a mystery.

In the midst of this vanity project, Lvovsky too must be praised for directing Rodriguez through a fine performance. It’s difficult to understate the importance of the way in which this young actress takes on the sophisticated, challenging character and her relationships with those around her. A close-up of her face may, at any given moment, express pain, anguish, love, happiness, anger and so on; this is enough to make the entire prologue of the movie, in which Anais Demoustier plays an older Mathilde, seem totally unnecessary. – ★★

Veronica (Simone Bucio), the first character to be introduced in the film, enters a hospital following an accident. There, she meets and befriends a gay male nurse, Fabian (Eden Villavicencio), who, meanwhile, is having an affair with Angel (Jesus Meza), the macho husband of her sister Alejandra (Ruth Ramos).

This secret affair already shows the characters as selfish, unconcerned, and unable to restrain their desires. They are widely unsympathetic as the real untamed of the movie. Things get even weirder as Veronica becomes a catalyst for the introduction of alien, octopus-like creatures with whom they begin to have intense, sexual intercourse. Therefore, what was already explored narratively through intricate and dramatic romantic entanglements becomes more explicit through the visual allegories represented by the shocking scenes of interplanetary sex.

The Untamed moves at a slowish pace, enhancing a disquieting sense of mystery, itself encouraged by the stark contrast between the shocking special effects and the beautiful shots of nature by cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro. The contrast implies perversion but also ambiguity. As likable as Fabian may appear to be, or may want to appear to be, he is quite careless when it comes to having an affair with, of all people, his sister’s husband. When he decides to have sex with the alien, he also shows his inability to restrain his sexual desire; this, in turn, reveals his carelessness for his own safety and well-being, a carelessness for his own life.

Therefore, Escalante appears to intend to examine desire in general, especially through sex, the most powerful representation of lustful desire. While it offers no narrative conclusion per sé, it perfectly conveys Slavoj Zizek’s idea that cinema does not teach us what to desire but how to desire it. By opting to play with body horror and sci-fi erotica and leaving a sense of ambivalence in both narrative and characters, he clearly goes for the gut rather than the heart or the mind. However, given the fact that it deals with physical desire, the fact that it appeals to the fact that it is more physically revolting than it is dramatically compelling, despite being sometimes overly condescending in tone, makes perfect sense. – ★★★★

]]>https://cinecola.com/2017/08/17/venezia-73-review-the-untamed-la-region-salvaje-amat-escalante-2016-mexico-denmark-france-germany-norway-switzerland/feed/0UntamedmattmicucciUntamed posterReview – HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM! (“Houston, imamo problem!,” Žiga Virc, 2016, Slovenia / Croatia / Germany / Czech Republic / Qatar)https://cinecola.com/2017/08/16/review-houston-we-have-a-problem-houston-imamo-problem-ziga-virc-2016-slovenia-croatia-germany-czech-republic-qatar/
https://cinecola.com/2017/08/16/review-houston-we-have-a-problem-houston-imamo-problem-ziga-virc-2016-slovenia-croatia-germany-czech-republic-qatar/#respondWed, 16 Aug 2017 17:41:08 +0000http://cinecola.com/?p=7658]]>A film about a conspiracy to question the validity of all conspiracy theories. Houston, We Have a Problem! tells the untold story of the intricate, tense, and dangerous Cold War event where Yugoslavia sold its space program to the United States.

Director Ziga Virc constructs his film like a straight-up investigative documentary. He makes extensive use of credible contributions by numerous people, including Slovenian psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek and people who were allegedly directly involved in the deal at the time. It also uses archive footage, such as news footage of Tito’s 1963 state visit to the United States (during which he survived an assassination attempt on his life), and legitimate audio recordings from the time. However, the interviews are staged, the footage has been adapted to suit Virc’s narrative, and the audio has been doctored, sometimes even in order to create phone conversations that never truly took place. Montage enthusiast Sergej Eisenstein would have been proud.

In fact, the deal that Houston, We Have a Problem! talks about never actually happened. Virc himself called his film a “docu-fiction.” Nonetheless, it initially confused many viewers when it first premiered at film festivals. Steve Pond of The Wrap wrote of the film’s Tribeca Film Festival screening that “it undoubtedly left some baffled festivalgoers wondering just what to believe – which Virc admitted in a post-screening Q&A on Saturday, is exactly the point.”

It is therefore clear that Virc’s intention was not only to question conspiracy theories, as mentioned earlier, but to show how vulnerable facts are and how easily history may be re-written. Yet, there’s more: because Houston, We Have a Problem! is legitimately engaging and entertaining, it also effectively makes worrying observations on the link between “entertainment” and “information,” and questions the validity of the forms and tones used for the proliferation of facts and news. – ★★★★

]]>https://cinecola.com/2017/08/16/review-houston-we-have-a-problem-houston-imamo-problem-ziga-virc-2016-slovenia-croatia-germany-czech-republic-qatar/feed/0Houston We Have a ProblemmattmicucciHouston We Have a Problem posterReview – THE BAND OF HONEST MEN (“La Banda degli Onesti,” Camillo Mastrocinque, 1956, Italy)https://cinecola.com/2017/08/15/review-the-band-of-honest-men-la-banda-degli-onesti-camillo-mastrocinque-1956-italy/
https://cinecola.com/2017/08/15/review-the-band-of-honest-men-la-banda-degli-onesti-camillo-mastrocinque-1956-italy/#respondTue, 15 Aug 2017 10:27:40 +0000http://cinecola.com/?p=7644]]>While it may be internationally underrated, The Band of Honest Men (1956, originally released in Italy as Totò il Falsario, no doubt in order to capitalize on the popularity of its undisputed star) is a quietly influential Commedia all’Italiana. Directed by Camillo Mastrocinque, the film is especially known in Italy as a vehicle for Totò, the country’s greatest cinematic clown whose unparalleled popularity with Italian audiences lives on to this day.

Here, Totò plays the caretaker of a building in Rome who, following a series of curious circumstances, comes up with a plan to make fake money with the help of a typographer, Lo Turco (Peppino de Filippo), and a painter, Cardone (Giacomo Furia). All three are honest men, as suggested by the title, who take this drastic decision as a result of oppression and financial troubles. They are also lovable klutzes, which means that they never fall out of favour with the audience.

The story of The Band of Honest Men, in dealing with ordinary men opting for crime as a moneymaking solution, recalls that of the widely acclaimed and admittedly superior Big Deal at Madonna Street, directed by Dino Risi, released two years later. It comes as no surprise to find that both movies were written by Age e Scarpelli, the most popular comedy film writing team of the day. While Big Deal at Madonna Street is much more narratively compact, The Band of Honest Men happily allows its lead comedian Totò breathing room for him to do his thing. As a result, the latter film is less internationally appealing and relies much more on the sensibilities of an Italian audience or, at the very least, an audience with a strong knowledge of the Italian sense of humour and Italian language.

Nonetheless, this approach also has its upsides: Totò’s charisma does, indeed, shine. This is particularly true of his interactions with his ideal straight man, De Filippo. The two formed a formidable team in numerous movies and, in fact, The Band of Honest Men is rightfully regarded as the film that consecrated them as a great duo: their reputation would soon be further solidified that same year with the release of Totò, Peppino, and the Hussy, possibly their greatest collaboration.

Although Totò was highly prolific in his lifetime, making hundreds of films, and never quite losing his popularity with audiences, his work is known much more in his home country than on an international level. Admittedly, most of the titles of his filmography feel like nothing more than comedy vehicles, no different than those starring Adam Sandler or similars today. Yet, a number of them are less reliant on cheap laughs and jokes and have a compelling, if not completely original story. The Band of Honest Men is certainly among them. – ★★★★

]]>https://cinecola.com/2017/08/15/review-the-band-of-honest-men-la-banda-degli-onesti-camillo-mastrocinque-1956-italy/feed/0Band of Honest MenmattmicucciBand of Honest Men posterVenezia 73 – review – SAMI BLOOD (“Sameblod,” Amanda Kernell, 2016, Sweden / Denmark / Norway)https://cinecola.com/2017/08/14/venezia-73-review-sami-blood-sameblod-amanda-kernell-2016-sweden-denmark-norway/
https://cinecola.com/2017/08/14/venezia-73-review-sami-blood-sameblod-amanda-kernell-2016-sweden-denmark-norway/#respondMon, 14 Aug 2017 17:58:58 +0000http://cinecola.com/?p=7618]]>Amanda Kernell’s feature debut, Sami Blood, talks about the Sami people, an indigenous community of the North of Scandinavia, and their oppression at the hands of the Swedish people in the 1930’s. However, it is also a coming of age drama about a young girl who struggles to find any reason to carry on living as a member of her own community and eventually turns her back on her own people and her own family.

The film, which premiered in the Venice Days section of the 73rd Venice Film Festival, begins with a Swedish woman, traveling back to her native land for the funeral of her Sami sister. After this, most of the film takes the form of a long flashback during the course of which we understand why Christine, then known as Elle Marja, decided to forsake her indigenous identity.

We see her attending a Swedish boarding school, mandatory for the Sami in the 30’s. She is immediately charmed by the academic challenges it poses. At the same time, we also see the constant bullying to which Sami students, including Elle Marja and her younger sister, are subjected to. All this eventually leads to two things: the development of Elle Marja’s self-loathing attitude and her desire to pursue a life in a place far from her reindeer-growing and yoiking native grounds.

Kernell’s Sami Blood is about a specific and widely under-represented people, but it is also through her commitment to a type of specificity that the story magically becomes universal. For instance, a painstaking sequence in which doctors inhumanely take measurements of the Sami students in the school is as brutal as many other sequences depicting similar, or indeed identical, situations of any story set during Nazi Germany and dealing with the persecution of Jews. Not to mention that the coming of age aspect of the story allows for another great point of connection with the viewer. This particular aspect reaches a high-point when Elle Marja falls in love with a Swedish boy, with whom he has his first dance. This is, by far, the most charming and romantic sequence of the movie. But the romance doesn’t last: when she travels to Uppsala to meet the boy again, who had invited her to her house, the outcome is a predictable car crash.

Despite the constant bullying and abuse, Elle Marja is not portrayed as a victim; far from it. Sparrok’s excellent restrained performance, a true driving force of the film, establishes a certain distance with the viewer, who might feel her suppression of her own Sami identity as a betrayal, particularly considering cinema’s common representation of this type of oppressed characters. It is particularly shocking to see her distancing herself from her younger sister who, on the other hand, rebels against rules imposed by the Swedish (in an implied attempt to eradicate indigenous cultures) that, for instance, forbid her to yoik (a style of traditional Sami singing). This distance is precisely what makes the film feel so powerful: it appears to respect the complexity of this brand of self-betrayal and its repercussions.

There is something more troubling about Elle Marja: more often than not we may find her doing things that we ourselves might have done under similar circumstances. Indeed, it may become quite difficult to understand why the Sami find it so important to protect their own unusual, somewhat bizarre tradition, despite the obvious troubles that they are causing them. Of course, this type of troublesome identification is the most remarkable thing about the movie. Kernell allegedly based the story of Sami Blood on the life of her own grandmother; perhaps this was her attempt to understand why she did what she did. If it was, she certainly doesn’t impose her own conclusions in the end result, but she does expose a specific type of condescending mentality, here represented by the Swedes, that caused (and still causes) much pain to many people. – ★★★★

]]>https://cinecola.com/2017/08/14/venezia-73-review-sami-blood-sameblod-amanda-kernell-2016-sweden-denmark-norway/feed/0Sami BloodmattmicucciSami Blood posterReview – SCENT OF A WOMAN (Martin Brest, 1992, USA)https://cinecola.com/2017/08/13/review-scent-of-a-woman-martin-brest-1992-usa/
https://cinecola.com/2017/08/13/review-scent-of-a-woman-martin-brest-1992-usa/#respondSun, 13 Aug 2017 09:29:16 +0000http://cinecola.com/?p=7589]]>Scent of a Woman (1992) is the American adaptation of a 1974 Italian film directed by Dino Risi of the same name. Written by Bo Goldman and directed by Martin Brest, the film is best known for finally earning Al Pacino his Best Actor Oscar.

Here, Pacino plays a blind ex-soldier, Lt. Colonel Frank Slade; an embittered, hard-drinking, cantankerous man who hires Charles Simms (Chris O’Donnell), a student companion, for a trip to New York City. There, he plans to have one last fling before committing suicide.

In Scent of a Woman, Pacino is at his most theatrical. Despite this, he never falls into self-parody, as he would do in some of his later works. Though he is perhaps sometimes excessively unrestrained by the direction, the movie is none the worse for it, and his performance remains the best thing about Scent of a Woman.

Interestingly, Pacino had once been linked to a scrapped 1978 film version of Born on the Fourth of July, in which he would have played a Vietnam War veteran. Despite this, though his Slade is an ex-soldier, he feels much more like a Hollywood stereotype of a disabled man (“just your average blind man,” as Slade proclaims himself). Still, the fact that his history and his condition has him marginalized, repressed and living in the shed behind his niece’s home in New Hampshire, establishes a point of connection with Simms, who is a poor kid studying in a posh college supported by student aid. In fact, it is because he is not rich that he finds himself having to spend Thanksgiving weekend with a cranky and blind old man; nonetheless, the meeting and subsequent bonding will prove to be a turning point in both of their lives.

Scent of a Woman is certainly overbearingly sentimental, right up to the insufferable speech delivered by Slade at Simms’ educational institution – a familiar ending scene in many similar films of the time. However, it also has its fair share of creative and memorable sequences, including a seductive tango one (already celebrated in Dino Risi’s aforementioned work, which starred Vittorio Gassman) that is possibly the most famous scene of the film, and the most parodied one as well.

Brest, who also scored an Academy Award nomination for Best Directing (losing out to Clint Eastwood for Unforgiven) would not capitalize on his success, and wait many years before directing his next feature, the disappointing Meet Joe Black (1998). Meanwhile, Pacino did reach a peak with his performance in Scent of a Woman, which still makes up for the bulk of most impressions of the actor by comedians (who may or may not have seen Scent of a Woman) to this day. – ★★★

]]>https://cinecola.com/2017/08/13/review-scent-of-a-woman-martin-brest-1992-usa/feed/0Scent of a WOmanmattmicucciScent of a Woman posterPordenone Silent 2016 – review – SÃO PAULO, A METROPOLITAN SYMPHONY (“São Paulo, Sinfonia da Metrópole,” Adalberto Kemeny and Rudolf Rex Lustig, 1929, Brazil)https://cinecola.com/2017/08/12/pordenone-silent-2016-review-sao-paulo-a-metropolitan-symphony-sao-paulo-sinfonia-da-metropole-adalberto-kemeny-and-rudolf-rex-lustig-1929-brazil/
https://cinecola.com/2017/08/12/pordenone-silent-2016-review-sao-paulo-a-metropolitan-symphony-sao-paulo-sinfonia-da-metropole-adalberto-kemeny-and-rudolf-rex-lustig-1929-brazil/#respondSat, 12 Aug 2017 10:01:12 +0000http://cinecola.com/?p=7567]]>In the 1920’s, São Paulo, the second largest city in Brazil, quickly became the country’s genuine face of national modernity. Its dynamism caught the attention of a number of filmmakers, including Adalberto Kemeny and Rodolfo Lustig, Hungarian filmmakers living in Brazil who created Rex Films and shot São Paulo, a Metropolitan Symphony, in 1929.

This was a city symphony film: a type of documentary film made throughout the 20’s and 30’s that, influenced by the avant-garde movement of the time, was based on major metropolitan city areas and sought to capture the lives, events, and activities of the city.

Kemeny and Rex Lustig were particularly influenced by Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), and use the same structure: one day in the life of Sao Paolo. They particularly focus on the workers and students, and the way in which their hard work contributes to the “order and progress” of the city (and the country). In fact, São Paulo, a Metropolitan Symphony, praises modernization and drives its point forward all too clearly. This means that the filmmakers have little time for a depiction of social inequality, rarely seen, except for a somewhat out of place staged shot, in which the rich take money from the hands of the poor.

Despite its lacks, the film remains a noteworthy piece of avant-garde filmmaking. The rhythm of the film is very exciting, and even the title cards, some of which are animated, tends to be surprisingly creative. São Paulo, a Metropolitan Symphony is an excellent document of its time and a stylized recording of a city’s hustle and bustle seen through the perspective of a popular ideology of its time. Interestingly, by praising modernization, it contrasts future film production of Brazil that, whether foreign or domestic, found most of their inspiration in the rural and impoverished areas of the country. – ★★★★

]]>https://cinecola.com/2017/08/12/pordenone-silent-2016-review-sao-paulo-a-metropolitan-symphony-sao-paulo-sinfonia-da-metropole-adalberto-kemeny-and-rudolf-rex-lustig-1929-brazil/feed/0Sao Paolo a Metropolitan SymphonymattmicucciSao Paolo a Metropolitan Symphony posterTransilvania 2017 – review – ZEUS (Miguel Calderon, 2016, Mexico)https://cinecola.com/2017/08/11/transilvania-2017-review-zeus-miguel-calderon-2016-mexico/
https://cinecola.com/2017/08/11/transilvania-2017-review-zeus-miguel-calderon-2016-mexico/#respondFri, 11 Aug 2017 09:12:01 +0000http://cinecola.com/?p=7542]]>Miguel Calderon’s feature directorial debut, Zeus, screened in the official competition of the 16th Transilvania International Film Festival. It is the story of a thirty-something-year-old male, Joel (Daniel Saldana), still living at home with his mother, Luisa (Ana Teran), with whom he has a somewhat disturbing relationship. Joel is a loner who spends his free time in the countryside with his falcon, the Zeus of the title. The balance of his life is disturbed when he meets a down-to-earth secretary; this encounter eventually leads to the loss of his son, which will force him to face reality.

Calderon is a well-known name in the art world, having worked in paint, photography, video and installation. (His work “Aggressively Mediocre/Mentally Challenged/Fantasy Island (circle one),” which was part of a 1998 exhibit bought by Wes Anderson, was shown in the film The Royal Tenenbaums.) Before making Zeus, he had directed a number of no-budget music video and installations. Yet, Zeus is quite different and, from the beginning, visually arresting. The opening shot, in fact, is an emotive sweeping shot of the countryside motivated by a flight of the title falcon; it introduces the eerie psychological tone of the film quite appropriately.

Indeed, psychology is an important aspect of the movie, particularly relating to the strange mother son relationship. There is something of a Hitchcockian Norman Bates to be seen in Joel, the main character of Calderon’s film. The falcon too, within this narrative, has symbolic connotations; in the end, Joel, Luisa, and Zeus will form a symbiotic relationship of sorts.

The psychological references are, of course, wanted. When I interviewed Calderon in Transilvania, he told me he was interested in psychoanalysis: “The study of psychological patterns is what matters to me the most; my output is making art.”

In the same interview, he admitted that he had not taken some elements of Zeus far enough. The feeling is that, perhaps, he could have. The outcome of the film might also frustrate a viewer wanting to watch a nice, well-rounded movie. Though the film is conventionally structured, it does not provide a fully satisfactory resolution. Nonetheless, the reason appears to be quite clear: Zeus is a sexually charged movie about a dark, unhealthy, repetitive pattern. – ★★★★

]]>https://cinecola.com/2017/08/11/transilvania-2017-review-zeus-miguel-calderon-2016-mexico/feed/0ZeusmattmicucciZeus posterReview – DESTINY (“Der müde Tod,” Fritz Lang, 1921, Germany)https://cinecola.com/2017/08/10/review-destiny-der-mude-tod-fritz-lang-1921-germany/
https://cinecola.com/2017/08/10/review-destiny-der-mude-tod-fritz-lang-1921-germany/#respondThu, 10 Aug 2017 09:39:04 +0000http://cinecola.com/?p=7515]]>Destiny (1921) is one of those early films in which reality and fairy-tale appear to blend in a most naturalistic way. There is a sense of timeless in the film’s notion of Death as a being roaming the earth on the same dimension as the mere mortals whose lives he claims. This is also why the concept could have been abused, had it not been dealt with in a film directed by Fritz Lang and written by his wife and collaborator Thea von Harbou.

At this time, Lang was still deemed a promising young director and did not have the type of reputation as the master filmmaker who would flee fascist Germany sixteen years later for the United States, where he helped found the film noir movement. Yet, as Destiny shows, he was already very eager to push the limits of the young new art form.

The story is that of a young lady (Lil Dagover), who pleads with Death (Bernhard Goetze) to bring her young lover (Walter Janssen) back to life. As unlikely as it may seem, Death makes a deal with her: if she can save one of these lives with love, he will return her lover to the living. Thus, she sets off on a dreamlike quest that will take to the Middle East, to China, and to Venice where she will bear witness to three doomed romances. It is also worth mentioning that she doesn’t only travel through space; she also travels through time, which is an aspect that adds a phenomenological layer to the inevitability of death.

So, Lang and von Harbou pit passionate love against the inevitability of death. In Destiny, Death is an implacable figure who has recently bought a plot of land, which he has turned into a walled garden for his captured souls. This personification led many critics of the time to proliferate the concept of film as philosophy. This personification of Death also suits the spirit of German Expressionism. Despite this, the film remains quite earthly and naturalistic. The sets, majestic as they are, present none of the abstractions of the sets of such films The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), or Lang’s later Metropolis (1927). Even the most pictorial sets, such as the candle room, in which Dagover’s character speaks to Goetze’s Death, is fabulously dramatic, and at the same time, relatively simple.

The episodic structure of the film is the only thing that Lang and von Harbou stumble upon. Much like Paul Leni’s Waxworks (1924), which follows a similar three episode structure, not all the episodes of Destiny are equal in quality or substance: the Venice episode is obviously the weaker and least creative; the episode set in the Chinese Empire, especially due to its ingenious special effects (the magic carpet one of this sequence would be used in Douglas Fairbank’s vehicle The Thief of Baghdad, directed in 1924 by Raoul Walsh), is the most exciting one; the Middle Eastern episode falls somewhere in between them.

However, what remains admirable, is that despite its heavy, gloomy and dark concept, Destiny is very open to a mix of tones, from the adventurous to the humorous. Its sense of humour is perhaps the most startling of all, though it makes sense, as it spirals out of the underlying irony of the film’s narrative: death is inevitable, and our heroine’s true mission is not to save her doomed lover; it is a journey through the trauma of death and her final acceptance of it. – ★★★★

]]>https://cinecola.com/2017/08/10/review-destiny-der-mude-tod-fritz-lang-1921-germany/feed/0DestinymattmicucciDestiny posterPordenone Silent 2016 – review – A VENETIAN NIGHT (“Eine venezianische Nacht,” Max Reinhardt, 1914, Germany)https://cinecola.com/2017/08/09/pordenone-silent-2016-review-a-venetian-night-eine-venezianische-nacht-max-reinhardt-1914-germany/
https://cinecola.com/2017/08/09/pordenone-silent-2016-review-a-venetian-night-eine-venezianische-nacht-max-reinhardt-1914-germany/#respondWed, 09 Aug 2017 11:09:22 +0000http://cinecola.com/?p=7498]]>Although Max Reinhardt was one of the most important producers and directors of the German stage of the first half of the 20th century, he allegedly loved cinema, and was more interested in film than theatre. Sadly, he never left a mark on film through his own directorial works, although countless actors, directors, designers, and writers were trained in his acting schools or his acclaimed theatre productions prior to entering the film industry.

Reinhardt’s biggest opportunity to make it in film came in 1913 when German producer, Paul Davidson, signed him up to make four films that year. The signing was prestigious; Davidson took out ads in trade papers announcing an exciting upcoming “Professor Max Reinhardt Cycle.” However, of the four films he was hired to direct, only two would be made: A Venetian Night and The Island of the Blessed.

A Venetian Night is a bedroom farce set in Venice, Italy, about a professor who falls in love with a bride-to-be of a middle-class German. Much like The Island of the Blessed, A Venetian Night is full of mythological and fairy-tale motifs that were borrowed from Shakespearean comedies and German plays of the end of the 19th century. To be sure, these aspects add a layer of interest to an otherwise minimal narrative and a film in which caricatural characters chase each other as in a most average slapstick comedy. Likewise, a touch of surrealism and dreamlike rhythm distinguishes it from other films of the kind.

Ultimately, however, there is nothing special about this Reinhardt film, which is rather disappointing. Critics and audiences at the time received the film coldly and, as a result, Reinhardt only made two of the four films that had been planned. Strangely, it seemed that Reinhardt took these productions for granted: as Reinhardt’s son Gottfried recalled years later, “he didn’t take the two silent movies seriously at all; they were a vacation. He was taking his holidays in Italy at this time and the films were done on the side,” a vacation he was paid 50,000 marks to take. Reinhardt would return to his stage work, and would only get to make another film years later, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in the United States in 1935, after the success of his stage adaptation of the Shakespearean play of the same name. – ★★